cliff. we're not reading out details of the conversation, but the lines of communication remain open. cnn's dan lothian is at the white house this morning. dan, i guess the fact that the lines of communication are open is a good sign. >> reporter: that's right. it is a good sign. it was just about a week ago that we were reporting about how nothing was going on, not in public and not in private. aides up on the hill, republican aides telling us there were no phone calls, no e-mails, no communication whatsoever. so this is encouraging in that the president sat down face to face with speaker boehner, but i think it's telling that both the speaker's office and white house put out these identical statements. i mean, what it shows here is that they've agreed to negotiate in private. there's a strategy here not to make this play out in public but rather happen behind closed doors so they can hash this out, hammer this out. it's unclear whether this will continue at that level. i did communicate wi